May you find some comfort here

The cup pictured here is one I found in a house where someone who lived there for a long time had moved out. Many things were left behind. It was overwhelming, actually, the things that had been left. It was hard to appreciate individual items when there was such an onslaught of other things. But I saw this cup, and it seemed very special to me, and I brought it home, and I love using it.

Who knows what the things are in a house that are most precious to a person? It’s a question that weighs heavily on my mind these days, obviously, in the wake of the catastrophic fires in LA. I wake up in the middle of the night and pace around my living room, trying to think of how those people are going to cope. I suppose there is some comfort in their having others around who know exactly what they’re going through.

It was 4 AM the other night when I sat in my living room and looked around at my own things, and I thought about how nothing I saw meant that much in the grand scheme of things. Not my favorite artwork, not the pussy willows on my coffee table, not the ticking clock on my mantelpiece. Things don’t matter, we tell ourselves, except that they do. Certain things do. They tell stories. They hold history. And so when I saw a man sitting on what used to be his front walk, talking about photographs he had lost in the fire, I felt so bad for him.

I thought about what home means to us. There are some things that are meaningful, of course. There are many things that are meaningful. But most of all home represents a safe place to be, a familiar place to be, a place where you are welcomed every time you come through the door. And it will take such a long time to rebuild and replace.

Still, if there’s anything I’ve learned about humans it’s how resilient they are. And how giving we can be when others of our species are in trouble. There is some hope in that.

It’s funny how sometimes you find the thing you need most in a kind of accidental way. I was looking through some papers stuck in a folder on my desk, I was trying to do a little cleaning. I found a copy of a letter I had written to someone years ago who was in great despair. I want to share part of that letter with you because reading it gave me comfort, and maybe it will do the same for you. This person was not feeling that he was very much loved. And this is what I offered.